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To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (17265)	2/9/1998 8:51:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Microsoft Case May Be Prelude To a Wider Antitrust Battle nytimes.com Well, we can hope. This is not exactly news, Microsoft attorney Urowsky brought up the matter in the first hearing. Yet comments last week by a senior Justice Department official and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee suggest that Washington would prefer to avoid a long-running, high-profile Sherman Act case, if possible. Specifically, they talked of agreeing on some ground rules of competition as computing migrates beyond the PC desktop, which Microsoft firmly controls, to the era of the Internet. The issue, according to policy makers and economists, is to try to insure that Microsoft's near-monopoly of PC operating-system software is not used to exercise what antitrust experts call "chokehold control" over the new markets of Internet software and Internet commerce. But, that would be inconsistent with Standard Microsoft Business Practice! Let Microsoft be Microsoft! Microsoft's senior management seems to be open to the notion of renewed talks with the Justice Department, but is wary. "We'd be willing to talk," Nathan Myhrvold, the chief technology officer and a member of the company's executive committee, said on Friday. "But there's a cynical view of the process of dealing with the government that says throw them a bone and they'll go away. Our concern is that by doing that we would be taking one step down a road which could lead to all kinds of restrictions on our business." Good old Nathan taking time off from supersonic dinosaur tails I see. There's another cynical view that says that laws are made to be broken, and what's legal is what you can get away with. Microsoft might want to contemplate how the purveyors of the much loved Chrysler car radio operate with all kinds of government restrictions, as does almost every business in our mixed economy. Only Microsoft is by its nature above all that, we hear. Bigger that the governments of the world? They are the government of the world! Or will be soon, if only people would realize the compelling greatness of DNS and the Web life style. Bill is taking us where we want to go! Cheers, Dan.